Railways to go for black boxes

New Delhi: Indian trains will soon have voice recorders or black boxes in a bid to facilitate investigators trying to identify the cause of accidents and assess crew performances, an official said on Monday.

The black box is currently used in aircraft

Keeping in mind the safety of passengers, the Indian Railways has decided to install the Loco Cab Voice Recording (LCVR) devices in the locomotives, a Railway Ministry official said.

The system is in developmental stage, the official said.

The video/voice recording system in locomotives would provide invaluable data to investigators to help them understand the sequence of events leading to an accident and to identify operational issues and human factors, including crew performance.

The black box is currently used in aircraft.

It is made of two separate pieces of equipment — the flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder and is usually kept in the tail of the aircraft, where they are more likely to survive a crash.